Immigration Reform
Caveat | The Iowa Immigration Education Coalition (IIEC) provides information on proposed and pending immigration-related legislation to IIEC members and the general public for informational and educational purposes only. The IIEC has adopted basic principles for common-sense immigration reform as a general guide for federal immigration reform, but does not as an organization engage in direct advocacy on any specific immigration legislation or legislative proposals.
- IIEC Principles for Comprehensive Immigration Reform
- Outlook for Federal Immigration Reform
- Proposed Federal Immigration Legislation
- Resources for Immigration Reform Advocacy
IIEC Principles for Comprehensive Immigration Reform | Download File
The Iowa Immigration Education Coalition, a non-partisan education coalition of business, labor, education, health, religious, civil and immigrant rights groups, has developed seven principles for common-sense solutions to immigration reform.
- Create Smart Enforcement – Because there has been inconsistent enforcement of our immigration laws over a long period of time, unauthorized immigrants are well integrated into the fabric of a local community. Current enforcement policies removing workers who have become well established in a community have a negative economic and humanitarian impact on families and local economies. Smart immigration reform is the opportunity to restore law and order by redirecting enforcement to real security threats and serious criminal activity.
- Create an Employment-Based Program to Meet Workplace and Economic Needs – Create more pathways to legally bring in temporary and permanent workers. These authorized individuals would then be granted full labor and civil rights to protect them from the few employers who take advantage of vulnerable workers.
- Keep American Families Together – Increase the number of family visas overall and within each category. Currently, families are separated by processing delays and long visa waiting periods that can last decades.
- Create a Path to Citizenship – Creating a path for earned citizenship for unauthorized immigrants will put more employers and workers on the tax rolls and help law enforcement focus on criminals, drug dealers and human traffickers.
- Strengthen Our Nation’s Security and Borders – National security is enhanced by registering unauthorized immigrants. This allows a mechanism for law enforcement to track who is in the U.S.
- Promote Immigrant Integration – Government, nonprofit agencies, community and religious groups must help immigrants learn the English language as well as laws and ordinances. This will facilitate civic participation and cultivate a robust democracy.
- Protect Fundamental Rights For All – The Constitution guarantees due process for all people in the United States. A properly-functioning immigration system that allows for more legal permanent and temporary workers provides a better way to guarantee due process and the fundamental rights of all as provided for in our Constitution.
Outlook for Federal Immigration Reform
Supreme Court Injects Reason into Immigration Felony Definition | American Immigration Council | Legal Action Center | June 15, 2010
On June 14, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously in Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder that a lawful permanent resident who is convicted of minor drug possession offenses does not warrant classification as having been convicted of an "aggravated felony." As a result, the Court held that Mr. Carachuri-Rosendo cannot be deported without an opportunity to make a case for why he should be allowed to remain in the United States. Please view the press release, and you can also read about this case on [the American Immigration Council's] Supreme Court Update page.
Conceptual Proposal for Comprehensive Immigration Reform | Sens. Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein and Robert Menendez | April 29, 2010 (From Immigration Works USA | Tamar Jacoby)
- Democratic framework for reform
- President Obama's statement
- Sens. Graham and Kyl statement
- ImmigrationWorks statement
- Essential Worker Immigration Coalition statement
- National Restaurant Association statement
- U.S. Chamber of Commerce statement
- Rep. Luis Gutierrez's response
Summary of the proposal from National Immigration Forum
POWER Act: Protect Our Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation Act | Senator Robert Menendez | April 14, 2010
Today Senator Menendez introduced the POWER Act. Crafted in response to reports across the country of employers using immigration enforcement to retaliate against workers who step forward to claim their workplace rights, the bill is designed to thwart the use of immigration law to quash workers' efforts to promote fair labor practices.
- The POWER Act: Protect Our Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation Act | National Immigration Law Center | April 14, 2010 (Key provisions of the act)
Immigration, Incorporation and the Prospects for Reform | Audrey Singer & John Mollenfkopf, The Brookings Institution |March 26, 2010
What impact will the rise in an immigrant population have on potential reform and on the U.S. overall? In this presenation Audrey Singer, along with City University of New York’s John Mollenkopf, studies the numerous effects of the country’s changing demographics, from shifts in the job market to how second-generation immigrants will socially incorporate themselves into American society.
The right way to mend immigration | Charles E. Schumer and Lindsey O. Graham | March 19, 2010
Blueprint for immigration reform from Senators Schumer and Graham including "four pillars: requiring biometric Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; fulfilling and strengthening our commitments on border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization for those already here."
Immigration Reform Is a Progressive Issue | Vanessa Cardenas, Center for American Progress | March 19, 2010
Report on benefits and need for comprehensive immigration reform.
Immigration and the United States; Recession Affects Flows, Prospects for Reform | Migration Policy Institute | January 20, 2010
This profile examines major legislation and events affecting US immigration, the size and attributes of the immigrant population in the United States, legal and illegal immigration streams, US policies for refugees and asylum seekers, the impact of the recession on immigrants and immigration, immigrant integration efforts, recent immigration enforcement trends, and prospects for comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
Family Immigration: Repairing Our Broken Immigration System | Immigration Policy Center | January 15, 2010
This paper lays out the key principles for family immigration within the context of comprehensive immigration reform.
Policy Update: The Past Year in Immigration Policy and Next Steps | National Immigration Forum | January 7, 2010
With the Senate having finally passed a health care reform bill, the Senate and the House will work this month to reconcile their respective versions of the bill. The reconciled version must then go back to the House and Senate for a final vote before being sent on to the President. The new goal is to finish before the President’s State of the Union speech. (The date for which has not yet been set.) Through the entire first session of the 111th Congress, the timeline for immigration reform repeatedly slipped, as the health care debate dragged on. Despite the partisan gridlock that has characterized this Congress so far, there were some positive developments on the legislative front, as well as with the Obama Administration.
Earned Legalization: Repairing Our Broken Immigration System | Immigration Policy Institute | November 5, 2009
We can expect every major piece of comprehensive reform legislation to tackle the issue of creating a legal status for the 11- 12 million undocumented immigrants residing in the United States. Ultimately, most politicians and policy makers agree that practically, the U.S. cannot deport this population, and some kind of process for legalizing status is necessary. However, there remains a temptation to create high penalties in exchange for a green card because many politicians want to ensure that people have paid the price for coming to the country illegally. An overly punitive process, however, ultimately defeats the purpose of a legalization program because it will deter people from participating and potentially drive people further underground. A successful legalization program combines measured penalties with clear and achievable goals that will get the maximum number of people into the system, identify the relatively few who do not belong here based on criminal activity, and integrate those who can contribute their talents as quickly as possible.
Policy Outlook for Immigration Reform | Brookings Institute | July 2009
There is broad agreement that the nation needs to overhaul its immigration policies, but how to change national policy is shaping up to be a major debate. Sketching the policy outlook for immigration reform, William Galston divides the problem into the specific issues that new immigration legislation must confront: overall level of new legal permanent residents to be admitted; the role of family reunification; employment and skills; making the new law responsive to economic change; enforcement; coping with past policy failures, and integrating the new arrivals.
Prospects for Immigration Reform in the New Political Climate | Brookings Institute | July 2009
New federal policies on immigration will require a new narrative, bold and innovative ideas and a determination to overcome major obstacles to action. Darrell West and Thomas Mann offer a forecast for immigration reform in the new political climate as the nation’s growing Latino factor and some recent shifts in immigration positions suggest that forging a new policy is possible. However, the topic still evokes economic, social, political and cultural obstacles that must be overcome if congressional reform is going to effective.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform: A Primer | Immigration Policy Center | June 24, 2009
America’s immigration laws are some of the most complex and archaic provisions that can be found in the U.S. statutes. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA) rivals the tax code in the level of detail, confusion, and absurd consequences produced by years of layering on provisions without systematically reviewing their results. Since the 1960s, Congress has periodically overhauled the INA, but has tended to focus on one hot-button issue at a time, resulting in a patchwork of outdated laws that fail to reflect the realities of 21st century America. The necessity of comprehensive immigration reform stems from years of neglect and failure to respond to incompatible interactions between different parts of the system, resulting in breakdowns that have crippled our ability to regulate immigration adequately, protect our borders, reunite families, and foster economic opportunity.
Proposed Federal Immigration Legislation
S.424: Uniting American Families Act of 2009
A bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate discrimination in the immigration laws by permitting permanent partners of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents to obtain lawful permanent resident status in the same manner as spouses of citizens and lawful permanent residents and to penalize immigration fraud in connection with permanent partnerships.
S.729: Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act of 2009
A bill to amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to permit States to determine State residency for higher education purposes and to authorize the cancellation of removal and adjustment of status of certain alien students who are long-term United States residents and who entered the United States as children, and for other purposes.
AgJOBS is a bipartisan bill that enjoys broad support in Congress. The AgJOBS compromise was carefully negotiated by the United Farm Workers and major agribusiness employers after years of intense conflict. AgJOBS is endorsed by major labor and management representatives, as well as a broad spectrum of organizations, including Latino community leaders, civil rights organizations, religious groups and farmworkers themselves.
The Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act (“AgJOBS”) represents a major compromise between farmworker advocates (led by the United Farm Workers) and major agricultural employers to address the agricultural immigration crisis. AgJOBS would provide a legal, stable labor supply and help ensure that farmworkers are treated fairly. AgJOBS contains two main parts:
Resources for Immigration Reform Advocacy
The Postville Project | Documenting a Community in Transition
On May 12, 2008, agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) conducted an immigration raid at the Agriprocessors, Inc. plant in the small northeast Iowa community of Postville. While the 2008 raid focused national and international attention on Postville, the raid is part of a much larger story: the rapid demographic change and transition of a small rural community since the 1980s due to an influx of people of many nationalities and cultures.
The Postville Project archives and makes accessible an interdisciplinary collection of primary and secondary source material from a wide array of humanities and social science disciplines. Comprised of material about individuals, institutions, and the community of Postville, the archive provides social, cultural, and economic context to the 2008 immigration raid and the story of Postville in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Read more »
Immigration Reform 101 | The Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church
A series of 35 one-page background papers, each dealing with a specific issue related to comprehensive immigration reform. The documents for Immigration Reform 101 are linked in PDF and MS Word format. Spanish versions are available here.
